Guest Post – First Draft to Finished Copy by Chele Cooke

I jumped at the chance to be part of this blog tour when the lovely Faye Rogers asked! I have previously read and loved Teeth by Chele Cooke (you can find my review here) which was all about vampires and this time Chele is taking us on a sci-fi adventure with the Out Of Orbit series!

The third instalment in the Out Of Orbit series, Rack and Run, is set to be released on the 29th October 2015!

Today Chele talks to me about first draft to finished copy in this fab guest post!

*Hands over to Chele*

About The Books

“You are an inmate, not a medic. You should get used to that.”

On the planet Os-Veruh, the native Veniche have endured a decade under the oppressive rule of a race of invaders, the Adveni.

When Georgianna Lennox, a Veniche medic, discovers her childhood friend has been sold into slavery, she seeks help from a revolutionary outlaw group.

As Georgianna’s struggle to save one life ignites a battle to liberate her homeworld, is she about to discover that it is better to be dead than ‘buryd’?

If you ask any author who has been through the publishing process what their favourite moment is, you’ll hear more than a few say it’s the first time they held their finish book, or saw it in a bookshop. There are so many moments to love within the writing and publishing process, but holding that finished product is a big moment for a lot of authors.

I’m no different. It’s the moment when all of the work, the late nights and hours spent staring at a computer screen in dismay, all come together. It’s not a manuscript anymore. It’s not a hobby. It’s a book. It’s a career.

And it has been a lot of work. From numerous drafts to a month long back and forth with an editor, it’s a long and hard slog to bring a story from your brain to a book.

I’m a big planner when it comes to writing. Before I write the first words of the first chapter, I’ll have ten thousand words of planning broken up into bullet points that create a rather interesting dot to dot.

Each book in the Out of Orbit series has had its first words written on the 1st of November for NaNoWriMo. For three years in a row, I have scribbled and furiously typed 50,000 words of clunky sentences and run on paragraphs, and I plan on doing the same this year. My first drafts are far from good, let alone great.

I’ll generally get about two thirds of the way through a first draft before I start again. I’ll have reached a point where I know I’ll need major rewrites to bring the plots together, so, I go back and fix things. I replot and edit, I rewrite entire scenes, add others and scrap even more. Then, when all of that is done, I’ll write the ending.

I’m one of those incredibly lucky (or weird, depending on how you look at it) people who absolutely loves editing. I’ll go through line by line, moving everything into a new word document for each draft. It only goes into the new document when I’m happy with it. There is a lot of rereading and changing things only to change them back five minutes later.

Once I have a manuscript I’m happy with, I’ll book in time with my editor. He and I go through a lot of back and forth as he sends me up to date manuscripts where I can point out any issues or answer any questions. Usually, the first run through will involve some rewrites (reintroducing characters and past plot points) and then it’s the line edits.

I love line edits. Seeing my manuscript go from a messy document with underlines and track changes all over it to a clean and perfected manuscript is so much fun, and very rewarding.

With a professional edited manuscript, it’s time for cover, proofreading, and the formatting. I’ll do a general sweep of print typesetting to find out the length of the book before I get it proofread and I commission a cover. When asking for a cover from a designer, you need to have the spine width, especially with a wrap-around design like my Out of Orbit books have.

A brief little respite while it’s off with various freelancers, and then, after I get it back from the proofreader, it’s time to change one manuscript into 5 different formats: Print, PDF, Word Document (for Smashwords,) ePub, and Mobi. Suddenly, there isn’t one manuscript to manage, it’s multiple streams and any mistake must be fixed five times.

Everything goes by in a bit of a rush around this time. The month before publication is usually my most hectic, and also my most obsessive, but I enjoy it. This is what I was made to do.

Holding that finished product in my hand reminds me of everything I did to get to that point. It’s not one skill, but twenty. It’s the I spent hours pulling my hair out over a plot point, or screaming at a computer when there is no way to fix that orphan line of text. It’s the late nights and early mornings trying to get every thought down before I forget them. It’s skype conversations with editors and flustered emails back and forth with designers. It’s money and time and talent all wrapped up with my name on the cover.

It’s a finished book, and with one more to go, next year, it’ll be a complete series.

About Chele Cook

Part time author and full time fantacist, Chele Cooke is a sci-fi, fantasy, and paranormal author living in London, UK.

While some know they want to write stories since childhood, Chele first started writing as a teenager writing fanfiction and roleplaying. Before long playing in other people’s worlds wasn’t enough and she started creating her own. Living in San Francisco at the time, she found a lot of inspiration in her favourite city, some of which can be found in her books.

With a degree in Creative Writing, Chele’s first novel was published in 2013. She currently has three books published: two books in a sci-fi series, Out of Orbit, and the first book of a vampire serial, Teeth.

A huge thank you to Faye and Chele for having me on the blog tour and for a brilliant guest post!

Have you read any books by Chele Cooke? Does the Out Of Orbit series sound up your street? I would love to hear from you! Why not leave a comment using the reply button at the top of the page or tweet me on twitter using @chelleytoy !

I am often known to be a bit clumsy and a little loopy! Book loving (obsessed), theatre loving, slasher film loving csi geek!
Winner of UKYABA Champion Newcomer 2015 and nominated for Champion of Social Media 2016 and Blogger Of The Year 2016!